Inventorying volume of substance in a specific region may be applicable to, and used in, a variety of fields. For example, inventorying volume of vegetal substance may be used for monitoring environmental changes, e.g., in order to calculate a growth rate of plants. Another example may relate to the construction industry, and more particularly, a demolition of existing buildings that may precede a construction project. For example, in order to anticipate efforts and/or resources that may be required in order to transfer material (e.g., debris) from a demolition site, the volume of existing material on site may need to be calculated. Accordingly, a system and method enabling determination of volume of substance (that may be distributed over large areas) may be highly appreciated in various fields, industries and/or disciplines.
In particular, with relation to the timber industry, it may be highly desirable to accurately determine the amount of timber that may be harvested from a specific region prior to deploying expensive harvesting equipment or facilitating transportation of timer from the harvesting site. However, currently, inventorying of timber volume that may be harvested from a forest in a given region is performed by manually measuring a sample of trees in the region and, based on such sample measurement, estimating the volume of timber. Typically, a fraction, e.g., three percent (3%) of the trees in the relevant area are randomly selected, the diameter of the trunk of the selected trees is measured at a predefined height from the ground and, combined with an estimation of a density (e.g., number of trees per acre) the volume of timber that may be harvested is estimated.
Evidently, current methods for calculating timber volume and/or other related parameters are lacking, the currently employed process requires deployment of personnel on site, it may be time consuming and, most importantly, the end result is a mere estimation of substance volume that may be far from accurate. There is therefore a need in the art for a system and method to enable accurate and efficient inventorying of substance such as timber over large areas.
It will be appreciated that for simplicity and clarity of illustration, elements shown in the figures have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements may be exaggerated relative to other elements for clarity.